RE-MEMBERING IDENTITY

“Socialization is the making of people . . . As individuals engage in cultural practices, they are involved in apprenticeship, learning, and development.”

Socialization

I have been referring to “career advice” as though it were a bounded category of texts, but the broad range of institutions and authors producing these texts meant that their subject matter was variegated and overlapping.

Career advice could (and did) encompass everything from etiquette to fashion to hygiene to deportment to efficient, dedicated service. No element of a woman’s body or behavior was safe from scrutiny, no workplace duty left undocumented. The socialization of workers could begin before they ever set foot in an office.

A first, crucial step in the socialization of the reader-worker was to help her cultivate the self-awareness that would allow her to successfully shape herself according to representations of the ideal worker.

“To find [a satisfactory vocation] you will be obliged to make some analysis of your self while you are investigating the occupation” (Lingenfelter & Kitson, 1939, p. 4).

Literacy was often an integral part of this socialization, as readers were instructed to externalize and reflect upon elements of their characters through writing:

“Some employment agencies ask all new applicants to write out their life stories in full detail before they try to guide them to suitable work. . . . You can learn a lot about yourself by writing a full account of your life. . . . While you are listing facts and memories, we suggest that you ask yourself uncomfortable questions. Here are some to get you started: By and large, am I a truthful person? Am I vain? Am I jealous? Am I envious? Do I like other people or only myself? How’s my temper? Granted that everyone is selfish, am I a little bit more selfish than the average?” (Hamman, 1946, p. 18)

By learning to adopt the gaze of an outside observer and direct it inward, workers could be socialized to self-monitor behavior, attitude, and affect. Aptly capturing the themes of self-scrutiny and self-regulation that pervaded career materials, this 1940s illustration depicts a typist surrounded on all sides by pairs of staring eyes embedded in her filing cabinet, her door, the ceiling, and the knot-holes in her wooden desk (p. 57).

Much of this self-examination was geared toward developing "personality," an elusive but all-important quality for both women and men in the new consumer-oriented economy. The following scene from Office Courtesy: Meeting the Public (1952), shows a typical example of "good" worker (Ruth) compared to "bad" worker (Barbara) on the basis of personality:

The scene above is followed by a dream-sequence in which Barbara comes to recognize the error of her ways. Thus reformed, she learns to take pleasure from being pleasant, and from doing all of the things that make a good secretary.

The following excerpt from a Bell Telephone training film, You Can Tell by the Teller (1945), similarly insists upon the intrinsic pleasure of interacting with customers. Even as the film prescribes a scripted interaction, it asks the viewer-employee to think of serving a customer as analogous to playing hostess to guests in her home:

Office workers, especially those dealing with "the public" were expected to be consummate diplomats and readers of character, knowing who should be given access to the “chief” and who should be tactfully turned away. Today, these “soft skills” are valued in managers and executives of all kinds. But career advice often positioned these skills—when possessed by women—as essential, "feminine" qualities, associated with the womanly desire to serve and assist.